“You made it sound like healing people was no big deal, but can you actually do it?” Ifriita asked quietly, eyeing the so-called clinic I’d set up. It was so basic that you couldn’t even call it “simple.”
It consisted of exactly two chairs: one for me, and one for my patient.
Aqual stood beside her sister, her brow furrowed. Now that I thought about it, I’d never actually shown either of them my healing skills. At least not as far as I could remember. No wonder they looked so skeptical.
“It’s okay. No problem.”
“I don’t know why, but I don’t feel very reassured,” Aqual replied dryly.
“Aw, c’mon… Just watch me.”
And so, I started healing folks.
I treated people with chronic pain, folks who could still move but suffered from ongoing fevers and coughing fits, children who got sick from the stress of being in a new environment, and so on. Most of them had relatively light ailments that wouldn’t kill them, and there were only a handful who couldn’t walk or move properly.
“It’s good that most of the people here are only suffering from lighter issues, but…” I began.
“That’s because those who couldn’t work due to injuries or illnesses were cast out and left to die.”
“Haaah… And then they have the nerve to preach about God’s love? Please…”
Religious matters were a delicate topic that I didn’t really want to talk about. Even back in my old world, there were faiths that dehumanized nonbelievers while preaching love and compassion in the same breath. The sheer hypocrisy was a sick joke.
“They see their actions as benevolence,” the hooded cyclops said flatly. “You need to remember that they’re perfectly capable of pitying us. It’s just that they use that benevolence of theirs to work us to death. They believe that they’re freeing us from our sins. Dying after enduring such hardship is our salvation so that we can live as proper humans in the next life. The humans make us pitiful demi-humans suffer through these harsh trials, even though it pains their hearts to do so. Their kindness, they say, lets them be welcomed into God’s arms as better people.”
“I think that’s an insane dogma,” I said.
“In practice, few are truly devout believers,” they continued, voice bitter. “What’s important is that God says so. That the clergymen say so. And if they say it’s right, then it must be right. Therefore it’s okay to make the demi-humans suffer. Everyone is doing it, so it’s fine for us to do it too.” The hooded cyclops spoke as if spitting out their words, then went quiet for a time.
Their hatred of Adolism ran deep. Deeper than even I’d expected. But honestly, who could blame them? Sylphy and the others, everyone who’d suffered under the Holy Kingdom’s rule carried the same wounds.
“By the way, um…what are you doing?” the hooded cyclops asked suddenly.
I was kneeling against a middle-aged wolf—or dog—beastman, wrapping his leg with cloth and tightening a brace around his knee.
“I’m bracing his knee and dressing it,” I said.
“…Huh?”
I was doing exactly what it looked like I was doing, so I answered as such, which caused them to stare at me like I was talking nonsense. Yeah, this reaction really brought me back.
“M-my word! The pain in my knee is all gone?!” the beastman exclaimed in disbelief.
Shocked silence fell over the room.
Yep. There it was. The hooded cyclops was giving me the same dumbfounded expression that Ira used to give me a little while back.
“Now that I think about it,” I said, turning to the hooded cyclops, “I don’t believe I ever got your name.”
“…Oh, right. Yeah. My name. People call me Mono.”
“You mean like ‘mono-eye’? Is that your real name?”
“No,” they replied curtly. “But it’s fine.”
The tone told me enough—it wasn’t fine. The man—or were they a woman?—seemed to have some baggage behind their name. Mono had Ira’s curiosity but was quite a bit more reserved than she was. They were also grappling with a darkness that Ira had never known.
“Gotcha,” I said softly. “Well, I think things are starting to look up, so try to take it easy, yeah?”
“Yes, well…I hope so.”
✦ ✦ ✦
After I finished healing everyone, it was finally time to eat the food that had been prepared while I was working.
The guards Viscount Travis had stationed on-site were in charge of meals, and apparently they’d enlisted the help of some of the demi-humans to prepare enough food for us as well. The menu was simple: a generous helping of vegetables, a bit of dried meat, and a lightly salted multigrain porridge. Quite frankly, it wasn’t very good, but there was plenty of it, and it filled the stomach at least.
“I suppose this is the best you can expect when you’re so far from the city,” Ifriita muttered, spoon in hand.
She wasn’t wrong. I believe Steven had mentioned that it was about a full day’s walk from Museburg, roughly thirty kilometers away.
Steven’s horse was quite the athlete considering he’d managed to get here in an hour. Honestly, way faster than the horses back on Earth. Maybe they were strengthened with magic or something.
My mind drifted back to something that had been bugging me for some time.
“Things’ll change big time if canned goods spread more.”
Ifriita nodded. “Our production output’s still pretty limited, though.”
The canned goods and instant noodle project was expanding as planned, but we hadn’t been able to distribute them this far out yet. Without the golem-powered mass-production factories running yet, everything was still being done by hand.
We were stuck between progress and potential. We wanted mechanized mass-production to be a thing, but we still didn’t have large-scale manufacturing systems in place that could mass-produce the metals to make the cans for the food.
We also still needed a large-scale blast furnace to mass-produce iron. Either that or the facilities with equivalent alchemy. In a sense, alchemy in this world was more proficient than Earth’s science with its potential. Instead of making a blast furnace, it could actually be faster to finish the mana traps, solve the problem of magic energy, and then make an alchemic iron furnace.
But an iron furnace wouldn’t be enough on its own. We’d need to get our hands on mass quantities of ore. And that means we’d need to reform how mining worked altogether. Then, in order to move large quantities of ore or refined metal, we needed transportation and proper roads.
Jeez, the road to mass-producing canned goods was a long one.
“There’s so much that needs doing…” I muttered, stirring my porridge.
“I have no clue how you got there from our conversation,” Ifriita smirked faintly.
“Well, the boss is way smarter than us. He sees stuff that we don’t,” Shemel said with a smile.
There was plenty of food to go around, but when I watched the ogre girls eat, it sure didn’t look like it. Meanwhile, the two princesses were really struggling with the stuff.
“I can handle the flavor,” Ifriita said delicately, “but there’s too much of it.”
Aqual didn’t even respond. She just set her spoon down after a couple of mouthfuls, which made all the sense in the world to me. Both of them had grown up eating soft bread and home-cooked meals. This watery porridge, with its faint hint of salt and weak broth, must have tasted like punishment.
“Kousuke,” Ifriita started again, “I require more food. I do not feel as though I have eaten anything.”
“Okay, sure. You good with a cheeseburger? Also, neither of you need to force yourselves to eat that stuff.”
“Mm… You’re right,” Ifriita admitted, before turning to her sister. “Aqual, I suggest you take him up on his offer.”
“…All right.”
“Kousuke, I request pancakes as well,” Ifriita added.
“Fine, fine,” I said with a grin. “What about y’all?”
“I’ll take a hamburger.”
“Me too!”
“I’ll skip the meat, but I would like some pancakes.”
And just like that, I collected the princesses’ porridge bowls, put them aside, and started pulling freshly made hamburgers and pancakes from my inventory. Before long, a crowd of pioneers began gathering around us, drawn by the unfamiliar aroma.
Fortunately, I had plenty of burgers and pancakes to go around, so I was able to feed not only the pioneers, but the guards as well. I didn’t have much whipped cream left, so I served the pancakes with jam instead.
“Delish!”
“What is this? It’s so good!”
The reactions were immediate and loud. The pioneers were perfectly split between burger lovers and pancake fans. Unsurprisingly, the carnivorous beastmen devoured the burgers, while the vegetarian beastmen gravitated toward the pancakes. Obviously, there were exceptions to the rule as well—people weren’t so easily compartmentalized.
And wait a second, didn’t you guys say you were eating all right? Don’t blame me if you get sick from eating too much.